Keeping Your Home Pest Free

4 January 2017

How To Prevent Wasps In Your Garden

Wasps are a dangerous pest, capable of causing a great deal of pain and suffering if they come into contact with humans or pets. Wasp nests can host a huge population of wasps if they are allowed to develop over time, which can be a serious hazard in your garden. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that you can prevent wasp nests from developing within your yard.

Remove Food Sources

Wasps are attracted to any rotting food that is exposed to the air, especially sweet smells that come from sugary drinks and fruits. In order to prevent wasps from taking up residence near your home, you should ensure that all of your garbage is properly sealed and not open to the air and clean up any fruit that may fall from fruit trees in your garden. You should also clean up immediately if you eat outside, removing soda cans and other food remnants.

Avoid Killing Individuals

If you see a single wasp around your home, avoid killing it. Doing so causes a certain chemical to be released by the dead wasp, alerting other wasps to a threat and encouraging them to come to the dead wasp's aid. Instead of killing a single wasp, you should either try to get away or follow it back to locate its nest so that you can contact a professional to eliminate the entire population at once.

Use Traps

With that said, you can make use of wasp traps to reduce the wasp population within your yard. Wasp traps can be purchased from most hardware and garden stores and will attract wasps to them before drowning them in a liquid or poisoning them. Some traps even use slow acting poison that is designed to be brought back from the exposed wasp to the nest, allowing the entire population to be affected.

Check the Exterior

It's also a good idea to walk around your home and look for any breaks in the soffit, siding, or other areas that expose the soft insulation or inner materials of your home, as these provide the best areas for wasps to build their nests. Additionally, you should check your yard for burrows and holes in the ground, as it is not uncommon for wasps to build nests in the ground. Fill in these holes and repair the exterior of your home in order to reduce the number of places that wasps could build a potential nest.

About Me

My name is Jennifer, and I was unaware that I had an insect problem until I heard my little girl scream when she saw bugs inside our home. When that happened, I started doing everything I could to make sure that our house was pest-free. I talked to exterminators and I did a massive amount of research to learn about the habits of insects and what attracts them to homes. After doing my research, I took steps to ensure that bugs couldn't get inside. Since I know how scary it can be for small children to see bugs in the house, I decided to write a blog to help other parents learn how to take care of this problem. I hope that the information I've provided in this blog will help you keep bugs out of your house too.